The Provincial Government has just released the updated cost of a 2022 Newfoundland and Labrador Nutritious Food Basket. It highlights the costs of nutritious food in our province. This is the second release of data using the updated food basket developed for 2021, which allows us to make year-to-year comparisons. It’s important to note here that the 2021 numbers have been adjusted to reflect some small changes in the calculation methods, so they’re not exactly the same as the ones we wrote about when they were released.
The Nutritious Food Basket
The Nutritious Food Basket is a standardized tool used to calculate the weekly cost of meeting the nutrient requirements for a family of four (specifically, an adult man and woman, a teenage boy, and a young girl). The food basket consists of 61 foods from the 2019 Canada Food Guide and is based on the National Nutritious Food Basket. The Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency collects data about the costs of these foods around the province during October and November of each year.
The Basics
In October 2022 it cost an average of $309 for a family of four in NL to purchase enough nutritious food for a week. That's $1,236 per month. This is an increase of around 12% from 2021, showing clearly the intense food price inflation.
The cost of food changes depending on where you live in the province and so does the rate of inflation.
We see the highest cost, as always, on the North Coast of Labrador at $467/week ($1868/month), an increase of a shocking 18.5% since 2021.
The South Coast of Labrador isn’t far behind, with an average weekly cost $413 ($1652/month), up almost 14% from 2021.
The next most expensive region is the Northern Peninsula, with an average cost of $385/week ($1540/month), also up 18.5% from 2021
Western Newfoundland is at $335/week ($1340/month), up just under 10% from 2021
Central Newfoundland and Central/Western Labrador land at the same amount, $324/week ($1296/month), up by 12.5% and 12.1%, respectively
Eastern Newfoundland is by far the cheapest place to buy food, with a weekly cost of $292 ($1168/month), up 11.8% from 2021.
Putting The Nutritious Food Basket In Context
One informative way to look at these numbers is to put them alongside monthly income support rates since we know that households on social assistance are much more likely to experience food insecurity.
Right now, a family of four (the same size used to calculate the Food Basket costs) would receive a base rate of $779 per month from income support — $1,301 if they've received the maximum rent/mortgage supplement, $1,451 for folks on the Labrador Coast who have access to additional cost-of-living amounts.
Based on this maximum amount, a family of four in Eastern Newfoundland would spend 90% of their income support cheque just on food to afford what’s in the nutritious food basket. This is up from 80% with the 2021 food costs.
Things look worse elsewhere in the province.
A family of four in Northern Labrador would need to spend 129% of their base income support rate just on food to afford the nutritious food basket, even with the additional cost-of-living amount provided to them. This is up from 109% with the 2021 costs
A family on the South Coast of Labrador would need to spend 114% of their base income support rate on food, up from 112% with the 2021 costs
A family on the Northern Peninsula would need to spend 118% of their base rate on food with the 2022 costs, up from 100% in 2021
In Western Newfoundland, a family would need to spend 103% of their base rate on food, up from 94% in 2021
In Central Newfoundland and Central/Western Labrador, families would need to spend 100% of their base rate on food, up from 89% in 2021
Eastern Newfoundland is the only region in the province where, with 2022 costs, the nutritious food basket wouldn’t use up all of a family’s base income support payment - it would still use up 90% of it, though, up from 80% in 2021.
Income support amounts are only one part of the income picture for folks who rely on them. There are also things like tax credits, child benefit allowances, and supplemental payments. Even in the best-case scenario, though, with every benefit maxed out at 2022 levels, a family on income support would still need to spend between 47% and 75% of their total income on food to afford the nutritious food basket, depending on where they live in the province. This range was 40% to 70% with the 2021 data.
We also know that almost half of the food-insecure folks in this province are employed, and looking at the cost of the nutritious food basket helps us understand why. A family of four with both parents working full time for the minimum wage (an unrealistic option for many) would be spending between 30% and 50% of their take-home employment income on a nutritious food basket. For most families, this burden would be reduced further through the receipt of child benefits — for an example family that benefit works out to around $800/month. With that factored in, in areas with the lowest food costs, some families living on two full-time minimum-wage incomes would be able to afford the Nutritious Food Basket spending about 20% of their total income on food.
None of these are sustainable scenarios — especially for folks on income support. We know that food is often near the bottom of the long list of household expenses and that people compromise on food spending to afford fixed costs like rent, heat, and light. We also know that for minimum-wage earners, steady work at a predictable 40 hours a week can be a real challenge to find.
We also know that caregivers are more likely to skip meals, eat less, or eat food with lower nutritional values (e.g. less fresh vegetables) so that their children can eat better. Income support at its current level is simply not enough to make sure everyone has enough food and can take care of their other needs (e.g. prescription medications), even alongside other benefits. These calculations are also based on a nuclear family that doesn’t reflect the reality in many households, that have (e.g.) more than two children or care for aging relatives.
Conclusions
First, we have legislated poverty by having income floors that are well below what would meet people’s basic needs (like other provinces, unfortunately).
Second, this data clearly shows how our social supports and wages are not keeping up with food price increases, and how that gap is disproportionately large the more rural and northern you get in the province.
Third, the cost of a Nutritious Food Basket helps us wrap our hands around what liveable income floors might look like. A “rule of thumb” often used in personal budgeting is that food should max out at 20% of a household’s budget — so that means a total income (including employment and benefits) of $75,000 to $120,000 per year for the family of four used to model the nutritious food basket, depending on where they live in N.L. That would be a big change for many people in this province, and a big goal to think about when we talk about what true food security might look like.
